


Phantom

by SapphyreLily



Series: Cobwebbed Mirror [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Victorian Era AU, sort of angst if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 08:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12272748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphyreLily/pseuds/SapphyreLily
Summary: A haunting, deceptively beautiful, all-encompassing - he is enamoured, too taken up, until it all falls apart.





	Phantom

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [Ghost by Halsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao4o-XRU_KM)

Dust motes, floating through the air, lit up by sunlight streaming in through the window. Not white light – red, blue, green; yellow and gold and the multitude, dyed by the panes of stained glass, sparkling like mini suns. He watches them, little planets in their own solar system, spinning and dancing, all to themselves, maybe bumping into each other, maybe reaching for the echo of something they don’t know is going to happen yet.

He closes his eyes, turns his face to the stained glass window, to the rays travelling across the church floor, and exhales. Exhales, like the soul is leaving his body, like he is releasing his worries into the atmosphere. Exhales.

And in the distance, he hears them calling for him already, hears the voice of his best friend, of his neighbour, but of course, not the one he wants to hear. He probably never will hear, the only one he really wants to hear.

_Hayato, Hayato, Hayato._

He presses his palms together, exhales. Looks up at the cross, smiles wryly.

“I’m leaving this here,” he tells it, and taps his chest, his heart, twice. “What is given will be taken away, but something better will come.”

_I’m trusting You. It was good, but something better will come._

He rises to his feet and dusts off his knees, turning to exit the sanctuary.

\-----

Yamagata never expected this. A dinner with his best friend and his husband, and someone else. Someone, come from a distant city, whose hooded eyes and silent ways were oddly…entrancing.

He couldn’t stop staring then, and he can’t stop staring now.

_Different, from everyone we have here. Different, and intoxicatingly new._

Shirabu had dragged him aside after that dinner, into the library, into the sole silent place in their house, and told him to be less obvious.

“The county and the mayor may have allowed _one_ occurrence, _one_ mistake in their perfect town, but as far as they know, it is purely political. If you want to take Taichi to bed, could you _try_ to be more subtle about it?”

Yamagata had stared, and laughed. Him? Take the pretty boy to bed? What nonsense!

But it weighed heavily on his mind, thoughts of loving another man like that, of getting involved with someone else when rumours of persecution were spreading like wildfire. It weighed heavily, because he had always known that his attraction to the fairer sex was only one half of the equation, and a good-looking man was always welcome in his house.

House, but bed might work as well.

He told Shirabu then that he’d be careful, but when his handsome cousin had turned up at his door the next day, he didn’t say no to a meeting.

A meeting, and another, and little outings around their town, showing him the sights, the ways of each trade, of the good and the bad and anything, _everything_ he wanted to know. He didn’t hold back anything, didn’t begrudge him anything, and even as the ladies swooned from behind their fans and the sheer curtains of their parlours, he smiled.

He was lovestruck, or at least, too involved to hold back.

And one day; another dinner, another time, an offer made to stay the night. “ _Surely it is too late, and the streets are rife with robbers. Your cousin knows where you are, or you could call and let him know.”_

He stayed. The fine gentleman stayed in his guest room that night, and Yamagata would have pressed for more, perhaps demanded more, but he was a patient man.

He woke in the middle of the night anyway, gasping at the weight on his chest, until a breathy voice identified itself, and he relaxed. Relaxed, until it was the chill of fingers upon his face, the warmth of lips against his, and the heat – the heat of nothing between them, perhaps white clouds of breath had it been colder.

Yamagata thought he saw the sliver of the moon behind his mostly closed curtains, but it could have been an illusion in the starburst, in the mounting fire of the moment.

Kawanishi went back to his cousin’s the next day, and by midday, Semi was at his door, shoving him into his study for a whispered chat.

He said ‘chat’, but he meant ‘interrogation’, what with all the questions and burning exclamations, until they had given up and were gossiping like schoolgirls.

It was an informative discussion, with the promise of perhaps more. Yamagata got to know that yes, perhaps Kawanishi would like to prolong his stay in their town, to learn a bit more about the trade.

(How insinuating, to suggest that. There was so much meaning in it. So much potential.)

But it did happen, again and again and again, even if sometimes they were false promises, words gilded with gold, no action taken. Even if Yamagata had to admit to himself that it was disappointing to be put aside so much, because he could walk out and see Kawanishi talking to yet another of the ladies who had taken a fancy to him.

(But he knows, he knows, he knows, what the circumstances are, what he has to do in order to preserve his image, possibly his life.)

(It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t resent it, just a little, that he couldn’t have had a circumstance like his best friend, despite that being deeply uncomfortable at the start.)

It became almost like a game of cat and mouse; to be chased, caught, and let go. To be like a starving animal on the streets, hoping for a scrap to be thrown, always holding on to hope, for a little more whenever a hint was slipped. Whenever a chance was given. Whenever the tall, handsome gentleman came over and ‘accidentally’ spent the night.

It was a cruel, beautiful game, but he was a man starving, always aching for more, and every tease was enough to keep him holding on.

Because despite his frequent absences, Yamagata remembered his story and his promises. Every piece of disclosed information, every mysterious part of his childhood and experiences, and he was besotted. Too far gone to stop and think, too far gone to wonder, if there was perhaps, a little something wrong, with all the tales he told, with all the promises he made.

Even a whispered conversation with Shirabu would not put him off; not the truth, slapped in his face, that Kawanishi wasn’t all he seemed to be, that _yes_ , he would be leaving soon.

What is reality, when the dream has you in its thrall? What is sensibility, when you think you are in love?

And maybe, it took him only as long as seeing Kawanishi kiss a lady’s cheek – her cheek! The scandal! – that he perhaps came back into himself a little, and began to question.

The next time they met, the two men, in their own sort of coupling – the next time, in the remnant heat and the inability to fall asleep, he began to ponder.

_Is it all worth it?_

The moon was new that night, the sky dark. He lit a candle to gather the soiled sheets, then sat in its flickering flame. To watch, the blond beauty in his bed. To observe the rise and fall of his chest, the sparkle of light off his eyelashes, the shine of the sweat drying on his skin.

To listen, to the regularity of his breathing, the pounding of his blood in his ears, the shake in his breath as he finally blew out the candle.

It took him a few more weeks to confirm it for himself, to see the lifelessness that was really there, the lack of enthusiasm, the polite but distant remarks, the lack of energy put into his work.

No, no, no, he knew, he knew. Yamagata was a foolish man. A blinded man. But he was not completely beyond redemption, not completely beyond the call of sense.

A third visit from Shirabu, to call him to his senses – but he had already found it. And perhaps – perhaps that was the last push he needed.

\-----

The church doors are heavy, and he misses it – the last moment, just before the carriage set off, the suspended fall of a raindrop off the eaves. Brown eyes – cocoa, hazel, chocolate – all of them, all people he knows, everyone watching, watching.

Like a whip cracked, the silence is broken, a tease drawing him back into the circle. Not an outsider, not like he who just left, but one of theirs, someone they know and trust.

They set off; disperse. The many who had gathered, they filter back to their own houses, and Yamagata – he walks back with his best friend and his husband, and waves it off when they ask him what he was doing in the chapel.

He turns his face to the sun, to the warmth of the day and the breath he had been holding for too long. To the reality around him, to the realisation that this listlessness, this hopeless pining, it had been too much for him, after all.

He exhales, inhales – the freshness of the day, the release of his unconscious burden. He might not have found what he was looking for, he might have lost a part of his time, his emotions, his heart – but he can see it fading away, like morning mist.

_You were ephemeral, a spirit come to haunt me, to tempt and show me visions of grandeur. But you were a ghost, a spectral haunting, and while I am cured of your affliction, I will never forget you._

_I can never forget you._


End file.
